Leslie Winer

Leslie Winer is an American fashion model, musician and poet.

Winer began her career as a fashion model in the early 1980s after moving to New York City from Massachusetts to attend the School of Visual Arts. She appeared in fashion campaigns for Valentino and Christian Dior and magazine covers for European and Australian editions of Vogue. Designer Jean-Paul Gaultier described Winer as "the first androgynous model." She briefly dated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat during her early career.

After her modeling career brought her to London in the mid-1980s, she spent a great deal of time at Leigh Bowery's nightclub Taboo. It was while in London she met musicians Jah Wobble, who was a former bassist for Public Image Ltd, and Kevin Mooney, former bass player for Adam and the Ants. In 1987, she would co-write the track "Just Call Me Joe" with Sinéad O'Connor. The song would appear on O'Connor's debut album The Lion and the Cobra, with Winer performing the backup spoken vocal. With Wobble and Mooney, she would record the album Witch in 1990. BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel played some tracks off this white label and the record went on to become a small cult-classic prompting NME to refer to Winer as "The Grandmother of Triphop". She had recorded a couple of 12" vinyls previously under the name '©' along with co-writer Karl Bonnie from Renegade Soundwave. She has also worked with Grace Jones. Helmut Lang did a small pressing of her album Spider that he released in his NYC shop sometime around 1999 to promote one of his shows. Winer occasionally records music with Swedish composer Carl Michael von Hausswolff and others.

Winer currently lives in France, where she has raised five daughters and is the co-editor for the estate of the late writer and poet Herbert Huncke. In 2014, she returned to modeling as the face of Vivienne Westwood's spring/summer 2014 campaign.

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